While I served as the Chief of the Armament Maintenance Branch for the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19th Support Command at Camp Henry, Korea, I lived in an apartment at the Sue Song Heights housing complex in Taegu. Usually, I went hiking every Saturday without fail in the local mountains near the Sue Song Heights apartment complex. When I went hiking, I usually stayed on trails that I had already learned and knew even in low visibility situations. However, I did like to learn new trails whenever I could tag along with seasoned veterans who knew the trails well. That didn’t happen often, but it did happen. And when it did, I was always up for the challenge. One wise old Korean hiker told me that I should start marking my trails as I hiked. He told me this would help me to keep from getting lost. He showed me a system that he had developed using orange-colored ribbons about three quarters of an inch wide and 10 inches long with his name stenciled on the ribbon in black ink. Whenever he took a new trail, he would mark the trail by tying those ribbons to trees at eye level. He would place the ribbons at intervals of about 300 yards so that you could easily see the last marker placed from the current marker being placed, thus forming a line-of-sight trail mark. The trail mark system that he used worked pretty well as long as it was light outside. The only drawback I saw was that they would be hard to see in low light or no light situations. Well, another drawback that I saw was that his system would work well, as long as you stayed on one long contiguous trail. But what happened if you happened to change directions? There wasn’t really any way to indicate that you had changed directions. That could be a problem. Here is a hypothetical situation for you. Suppose that your name just happens to be Wrong Way Conway. Now, let’s further suppose that one fine day, you are out hiking. When you start out, it is nice and sunny and warm. But as the day progresses, a storm moves in over the mountains, the temperature drops, and it begins to rain. It doesn’t rain very long. But after the rain eases up, a fog settles into the valleys and canyons between the mountains. Initially, you are above the fog, so you don’t think about it. But as you descend down the mountain, you walk right into the middle of that fog. And that fog gets thicker and thicker as you descend. Now remember that your name is Wrong Way Conway. That means you don’t know which way is the right way. So, naturally, in the fog, since you can’t see your trail markers you automatically go your way, which is, you guessed it, the wrong way. And like all people who go the wrong way, soon, you get hopelessly lost. However, our fearless hero, Conway, doesn’t even realize that he is hopelessly lost, so he continues about his merry way. And which way do people usually go when they’re hopelessly lost? Anybody have any ideas? That’s right. They walk around in circles in the direction of their dominant eye or arm or leg or side. So, for example, a right-handed person would walk around in circles to the right or clockwise, and a left-handed person would walk around in circles to the left or counterclockwise. A person could walk for one helluva long time going around in circles and not even realize that they are lost. Certainly, good old Wrong Way Conway never realized that he was lost. Now, if you just happened to notice a landmark while you were walking around in circles, and if you happened to pass that same landmark more than once or twice or three times, you could safely hit the brakes and stop to think about it for a minute. Cuz let me tell you folks. You are definitely lost. But at least now you know that you are lost. It’s at that critical point in time that you need to think about that word STOP. You have to sit down, think about your situation, you have to observe your location, and you have to plan what you will do next. In old Wrong Way’s case, he could stop walking around in circles. He could certainly sit down and rest while he waited for the fog to lift. Cuz let’s face it, he ain’t going anywhere until that fog lifts and he can observe his location and where he needs to go. Only then can he devise a plan to get the hell out of Dodge and get down off of that mountain. Along the way, Wrong Way might even relocate his trail marks. I said he might. I didn’t say he would. After all, his name is Wrong Way Conway. I liked the trail mark system that I learned from my Korean mentor. However, I modified it ever so slightly. I used four colors instead of one. I used the colors orange for West, yellow for East, red for South, and green for North. Another modification that I made to my ribbons was that instead of having my name stenciled on the ribbons, I had the words, “Migug Daewi,” which means American Captain literally translated from English to Korean, stenciled on the ribbons. My ribbons still had the same drawback that every other ribbon had in that they couldn’t be seen in low light or no light situations. I thought about adding a reflective strip on all of my trail mark ribbons. Like I said, I thought about it. But I didn’t do it because it cost way too much, and at the end of the day, I’m a pretty cheap bastard. So, I just didn’t have a solution to the “Wrong Way Conway” problem in case of inclement weather. However, I always attempted to ensure that I was in familiar territory well before I ran out of daylight. It is very difficult to explain your way out of a dumb shit situation that was well within your ability to manage or control. So, I always tried to control dumb shit situations. One thing I never did was to hang trail mark ribbons along trails that I already knew. Some people would hang trail marks every time they hiked regardless of whether they knew the trail or not. One Saturday as I was out hiking, I was out on a back trail that very few people usually hiked. There were two Korean hikers ahead of me. The hiker in the lead was perhaps a half mile in front of me and he was marking his trail. I’ll call him front hiker. I noted that he never once looked back to check his back trail. The hiker behind him and in front of me, was perhaps a quarter-mile distant from each of us in opposite directions. I’ll call that hiker, middle hiker. Middle hiker was systematically removing all of the trail marks that hung from the trees that he passed. He indiscriminately removed trail marks. I don’t know if he was doing this for spite or if he thought he was beautifying the trees. And I also didn’t know how many of those trail marks had been hung by hikers that day, other than the ones by our fellow hiker, front hiker. I also don’t know how many of those hapless bastards had the same worthless sense of direction that our good friend Wrong Way Conway had. If they all did, there were going to be a whole bunch of lost, drunk, pissed off Korean hikers who wouldn’t have a clue about which way to go to get home. You see, the problem is that the average Korean hiker doesn’t hike just for the exercise. Oh no. The average Korean hiker hikes purely for the joy of getting drunk on Soju out in the backwoods. They will hike for hours just so that they can consume massive amounts of dried squid, peanuts, and Soju. When they get ready to hike back, they are usually three sheets to the wind. That’s right. They’re drunk off their asses. They can barely stand much less walk in a straight line. They use those trail marks to guide their asses home. But now that Joe smart ass (middle hiker) has removed all of those trail marks, oops! There ain’t no trail marks to guide their asses home. Damn. Ain’t that a bitch. But they’ll be so damn drunk, they won’t even realize that their shit was stolen. They’ll just be stumbling around in a drunken daze, or is it stupor, thinking that they just got lost right from the get-go. And they won’t have a clue what to do. And even the smartest of them, isn’t smart enough to stop and assess the situation and realize that they’re hopelessly lost. Not a chance. They’ve got too goddamn much pride to admit that they are lost and walking around in circles. The problem is that eventually it’ll get dark, and they will panic. And when they panic, they will do something stupid. I know all of that’s going to happen. But I don’t get involved. I just mind my own business and continue on my way down the trail as if nothing happened. Cuz what else can I do? I cannot very well mark the trail that each of those hikers took because I don’t know where they came from and where they were going to. Hopefully, they are all like me and they have all been on this trail before. Fat chance of that happening. As it is, I think that a whole bunch of Korean hikers were on an exercise in futility when they started their trail marked hike only to finish the hike minus trail marks.
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